New Allan Ramsay festival Carlops 14 - 16 October 2016.
Allan Ramsay Snr Born 1684 – 1758 Leadhills
Lanarkshire, was a Scottish poet who strongly influenced Robert Burns. He was
one of the founders of the Easy Club, a group of like-minded men who enjoyed
literary discussions over a bottle of claret. It was known for Jacobite
sympathies and Ramsay was determined the Scots language would not die out in
the years after the Act Of Union (1707) when “North Britishness” was all the
rage.
He started
to earn money for his verse collections in Scots and then decided to turn his
wigmaking shop in the Old Town into a booksellers. He also decided to rent out books, and became known as the
founder of Britain’s first library.
He also
composed Scotland’s first opera The Gentle Shepherd, which is a ballad opera
both comedy and a homage to the joy of pastoral life, which was his
masterpiece. There is monument to Allan Ramsay Snr in Princes St Gardens.
Allan Ramsay
Jnr was his eldest son. He studied art in London and Italy and then based
himself in Edinburgh in 1738. He established himself as a portrait painter and
later moved to London. Where he was appointed official portrait painter to King
George III. Earlier
this year, his long lost portrait of Charles Edward Stuart, painted at
Hollywood in 1745, was bought for the nation at a cost of £1m and now hangs in
the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
